House Tour

Browsing other homes on the internet is one of my favourite pass times. It’s great to look at beautifully designed spaces, but seeing real homes brings so much more… More character, personality, charm… So inspiring because they’re simply more attainable.

Having been in our home for almost two months, I thought it was about time I added a home tour. It is no where near complete, but hopefully this will give you an idea of where it’s headed!

Entrance

When entering our little home, you’re met with a short hallway and closet. Here is a quick photo before move-in day:

And here’s how it looks after painting the chevron wall, creating a landing strip and setting up a mail sorter:

Bathroom

On your left, you hit our bathroom:

And here’s how it looks with our shower curtain and upgraded bathroom mirror:

Kitchen

On the other side of the hall, you enter the kitchen:

 

Pretty plain. And small! Here’s how it looks now that we’ve added a cart, installed open shelving, and added extra baskets for storage:

Living room

Through the kitchen, you hit our main living area.

Here’s how it looks with a new gallery wall:

You may notice one room strangely missing… Our bedroom. Honestly, I’ve hardly touched it. Just to complete the tour, here’s our before shot:

Although we of course have our bed, headboard, dresser and so on in there, it’s definitely still… well… in the before stages. Eventually I’ll get there!

Hope you enjoyed my quick home tour! Doesn’t take long to glance through photos of 625 sq ft of space. Be sure to check back as I’ll make sure to update it as our home takes shape!

For a full list of projects, check out my Organize and Projects pages.

What a Gem! This Week’s Favourite Five

Here are my top five finds of from this week:

1. Chris Loves Julia‘s list of Less Traditional Things to Fill a Bare Wall:

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I love the idea of displaying photos on a shallow shelf like this. I’ve been brainstorming new ways to display more photos of family and friends in our home, and I think this could be a lovely and casual solution. Plus, the list also included bikes on display:

Though clearly not something I would choose to do, this space pulls it off. One of my closest friends would love to display her bike like this, so I just had to include it!

2. Emily Henderson is quickly becoming one of my favourite designers. Check out her latest master bedroom makeover:

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Gorgeous. I would prefer something more feminine myself, but I nevertheless love the crisp white combined with dark indigo and mustard yellow accents.

3. Ceramic Owl Bookends:

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I’ve never been one for collections, but if I had to have one, ceramic owls would be it. Maybe because they symbolize wisdom? Or reflect my book-adoring ways? Whatever it is, I may just have to indulge the desire to collect a few more…

4. Glass Jar Typography:

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Honestly. For someone who has spent years doodling different fonts, how has this never crossed my mind? So simple, yet so effective.

5. This Coral Infused Bedroom:

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Clearly I’ve had bedrooms on the brain this week… Maybe because ours is an utter disaster. It’s on the list. Anyway, I had to add this in for two reasons.

a) The design itself, of course! Sarah did a beautiful job of combining a few different prints, from the wallpaper, to the bedspread, to the bright little pillow. The use of texture in the space is great too: the dark brass nightstand, the airy glass lamp, the grasscloth wallpaper, the nailhead design… Most importantly, it’s a removable feature wall, so renter friendly!

b) I love getting to know the blogger behind the design, and she sounds so lovely and approachable! Her home is gorgeous, and she is even a renter. Now I’m intrigued.

Hope these inspired you as much as they did for me! I will tackle our bedroom… I will tackle our bedroom…

Have a wonderful long weekend to all you Canadian readers out there :)

Sad News…

Hello lovely readers,

I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be taking a few days off my blog. There’s been a death in my family and I feel so shaken by the fragility of life… I think it would be best for me to spend time taking care of myself and the ones I love.

Promise to be back soon,

Lauren

What A Gem: This Week’s Five Favourites

This week went by so fast! I guess that’s what happens when you’re racing to finish projects before a Pinterest Challenge :) Here are my top picks of the week!

1. Dip-Dyed Textiles

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Painted fabric like these dip dyed pillows seem to be quickly becoming a new trend. I love the pop of colour against the crisp white! Check out this tutorial from Curbly for more pillow inspiration. (In my opinion, you really can never have too many pillows..!)

2. A rental kitchen gets a gleaming new faucet

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I love the blogger behind the Manhattan Nest. His straight up writing style (read: he swears a lot!)… Hilarious! This week, he inspired me when he installed a new faucet in his rental kitchen in Brooklyn. If you’re going to be in your apartment for a while, the investment could be worth it.

3. Apartment Therapy: 7 Shopping Tips

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I consider myself a pretty knowledgeable shopper… but this list was certainly useful! Check it out.

4. Kitchen nook

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There is just so much that I love about the kitchen nook I discovered this week via Belle Maison this week…. The abstract art, the pops of pink against the pale blue, the colourful chairs… It’s so fresh and feminine. I’ve always shied away from pink in my home, but really, why not embrace a few shots of girliness here and there?

5. Ornate Teal Mirror

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Admittedly, you may notice a trend in these photos… Teal (turquoise? light blue?) furniture always appeals to me. I think this could make a great DIY. Just spray paint an old ornate mirror to add character and colour to a space.Plus, if you have been considering painting a piece of furniture but aren’t sure about such a bold choice, this allows you to try it without the risk!

There’s my round up for the week! Check back Monday for my newest organization post. My home certainly needs it after the mess my projects left the last few days…

 

Pinterest Challenge: Chevron Entry Wall

I’ve been looking forward to the Pinterest Challenge all week!

It’s given me the motivation I needed to tackle a project I’ve been contemplating for a while. You may have noticed it in my To Do List:

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I’ve been obsessed with this whole home for a while, but I especially loved the entry. I knew I wanted to create a feature wall for ours, but wasn’t quite sure how I wanted to go about it. I didn’t want to buy wallpaper or a stencil (I’d rather spend my budget elsewhere) so I needed a pattern simple enough to tackle with painter’s tape. I thought about squares, diamonds, stripes… But ultimately, chevron won out. It’s only paint! I decided that if I really found it too bold, I could simply paint over it.

Here’s how we left off after I created a landing strip in our entry way:

(As a side note: I wouldn’t have kept that carpet in the entry anyway, but my dog literally ATE HALF OF IT. I was not impressed!)

My inspiration was a great AT House Tour, but unfortunately they don’t explain how the chevron wall was created, besides of course painter’s tape, a level and whole lot of patience!

Here’s how I did it:

Tools required:

Frog Painter’s Tape (that stuff is GOLD)

A level

A pencil

Measuring tape

Exacto knife

Paint

Paint brush

Small roller (optional)

1. Each chevron side is 1′ long. To start off, I used my level at a 45 degree angle. I then used it to trace a line, and pasted my tape along the line. I didn’t need to worry much about the length, because I could trim that off later.

2. Then, I created one strip of the zig zag from one side of the wall to the other, following the same process as above. This was the most difficult part, as from here on out, I followed this pattern. Unfortunately I didn’t take any photos of this part since it was definitely trial and error!

3. To do the next strip, I used the roll of tape to measure the distance I would need between the zig zag and marked it with a pencil.

2. Using my pencil mark as a guide, I then traced a line using my level.

4. Following the line I traced, I pasted my frog tape.

Here’s what it looked like at this point:

As a quick tip: It’s best to have each piece overlapping. That way, you can follow the line of the opposite piece of tape with the exacto knife instead of having to free hand your cut. For example, in this picture, I would have been better off going with slightly longer strips.

6. From there, I cut off the excess with an exacto knife, so it looked like this.

Here’s the progress!

 

I literally just continued that way for the entire wall. I didn’t need to worry too much about the corners lining up: as long as the tape was at the right angle and the right distance away from the previous strip, the lengths and points lined up.

7. Once all taping is finished, run down each edge of tape with a credit card to avoid air bubbles. This was a crucial step.

8. Begin painting! We (i.e. Shaun) did the first coat with a paint brush to avoid extra paint from seeping under the tape.

9. We let that one dry overnight, and tackled the next one with a small roller brush (a “whiz” if you’re curious to know the term of the trade!)

Here’s how it turned out!

I’m so happy with the results! I was nervous at first… Kind of like when you dye your hair and it takes a while to get used to such a drastic change?

I am so impressed with the frog tape. It left such crisp lines!

I’m so happy with the results! Eventually I’ll buy a mirror that fits the space better, but for now, I’m over the moon!

How did your Pinterest Challenge go? Did it end up leaving a mess in every other part of your house like me? I can’t wait to see them!

I’m also linking up with:

Dress Up Your Builder Basic Mirror… Renter Style

A while ago I read how John and Sherry from Young House Love built a frame around their builder basic mirror. How sweet is this?

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You would never know that they didn’t just replace it with a brand new mirror. The project clearly stuck with me over the last few months, because as soon as I saw our bathroom mirror, I knew I wanted to tackle it!

(Yup, that’s me hanging out in my yoga gear on the weekend. Clearly a Vancouverite.)

Of course, I had to tweak it a bit because:

a) I clearly don’t have any of those fancy saws they used to make it happen. And more importantly…

b) We don’t own our bathroom, so I wanted something that was easy to remove!

Here’s what I did:

First off, Shaun came across some extra chair rail (I’ve since learned that this is similar to crown moulding, except it doesn’t have the angle like moulding does.) We measured out our mirror, and he cut four pieces down to size on a 45 degree angle.

If ever you don’t have a saw to cut them on an angle like this at your place, you could borrow like we did (we certainly don’t have space to house a saw in our bitty apartment!) or you could probably have them cut it to size for you when you buy it.

I started off by spraying the chair rail in a high gloss black. I wanted matte, but painters tell me it’s much more durable to go with a gloss in a bathroom.

Not a fan. It looked like cheap plastic.

I decided to spray over it in a matte anyway. I’m such a rebel. (I’ll keep you posted over how well the paint holds up.) To do so, I sanded it down with 120 grit sandpaper (since matte won’t stick to gloss very well) and sprayed it out again.

To get rid of the remaining grooves from my first sanding, I sanded it again with a much finer grit, 220, so that I could spray it all again. Long story short, it would have been much faster to go with the paint I originally wanted. Oh well… Live and learn.

From there, we needed to fasten the frame together.

I bought corner brackets for a couple bucks from our local hardware store. I wasn’t sure if the screws would damage the chair rail, so we opted for some E6000 super glue (you can buy it at Michael’s) that I had from a previous project to fasten it together.

Once the glue had some time to set, we flipped it over and caulked the corners. This would probably be the hardest section of this DIY simply because not everyone has the means to caulk something… If you don’t, there are other options! One I’ve heard of is called “caulk singles” which basically allows you to caulk something without the gun. For all you bakers out there, I’ve even heard of cutting the tip off a zip lock bag like you would when using icing… If you’ve tried either of these, I’d love to hear how well it worked out!

We squeezed out a line of caulking on the corners, (in this photo you can see some of my remaining sanding marks)

 and smoothed it out each one with a damp rag.

I let the caulking dry for a couple hours and sprayed it out (remember, I needed to spray it again after sanding it again anyway) to cover the caulking in black. I also needed to spray the back side of the frame because the reflection in the mirror allows us peak at the back of the frame.

Curious to see how it works in a rental? All we did was attach the frame to the mirror with large black command strips!

Once the glue had fully set (I left it overnight) I attached the command strips, one on each board. As a tip, the box says to let paint sit 28 DAYS before using the strips. I’m way too impatient for that, so I just sanded down the areas where the command strips would go. Now, when we want to remove it, we just need to unstick it and pull off the velcro!

So, again, the Before:

And After!

How great is that? It makes the bathroom look so much more high end. Way better than the cheapest possible options the builder (or building manager?) chose for this place.

Final costs:

Chair rail: free! That being said, I doubt using so little would really be very expensive.

Spray paint and glue: $0, as they were leftovers from previous projects.

Velcro command strips: I got the biggest kind, so they were about $6.

Brackets to attach the boards together: $2.

Total: $8. Awesome.

Our bathroom is coming along… But there is still a lot to do. I want to replace the hardware, hang some shelves and artwork (hence the black wall you can see in some of those reflections)… Seeing this change has definitely inspired me to keep going though! Have any cheap ideas to dress up your bathroom? Any projects you have been proud of on such a small budget? I’d love to hear from you!

I’m linking up with:

Not Just A Housewife

Oops.

I was so thrilled about the sunshine last Friday that I had high high hopes for this weekend… Between the playoffs and the sun, I think I bit off a bit more than I could chew! I promise I’ll be back tomorrow with our bathroom update. Until then, feel free to check out my instagram for a few progress pics of what I’ve been working on taping (and so far am so proud of!)